A High-Maintenance Friend
Now think of the most emotionally risky relationship in your life, the one where you’ve invested the most. Probably the most emotionally risky thing anyone can do is have children. Right behind that is getting married. With either of those, you’re putting your heart and soul into that relationship.
That’s where any good church leaders are with their churches, and that’s where people need to be with the church. It needs to be an emotionally risky relationship.
Any relationship that’s worth keeping has some level of emotional risk to it. That’s the only way you get anything out of it.
Has anyone ever benefited from an emotionally distant marriage or an absent friend? Same with church. People get out of it what they put into it.
Irreconcilable Differences
The unfortunate thing about emotionally risky relationships is the people involved eventually are hurt by the relationship, one way or another.
People put their heart and soul into their marriages and children. Thus, their hearts and souls can be crushed by their spouses or kids. Spouses and children can hurt you, disappoint you, burn you. Or you can just lose them, one way or another.
Any way you look at it, you’re going to get hurt, sooner or later.
I have come to believe that the people who are hurt the most by the church are the ones who care most about the church.
How can you be hurt by something you don’t care about? Why would you be wounded by the thoughts or opinions of someone who you don’t value?
The more you become emotionally invested in the church, the more vulnerable you are to disappointment and hurt. It’s the people who pour their hearts and souls into the church who can most have their hearts and souls completely stomped on by other Christians.
